Tunney, Paddy (1921–2002), traditional singer, was born 28 January 1921 in Glasgow, Scotland, the third of the eight children, three boys and five girls, of Patrick Tunney, labourer, of Mulleek, Belleek, Co. Fermanagh, and Brigid Tunney (1887–1975), folk singer. Brigid was born 14 June 1887 in Rusheen, Co. Donegal, second of the six children, three boys and three girls, of Michael Gallagher and his wife, Mary, née Meehan, both of Tower, Pettigo, and both from a farming background. She appears to have been educated locally and then to have travelled back and forth to Glasgow, in search of work, and married in Glasgow before settling in Mulleek in 1927. Coming from a family of renowned singers, she acquired a great number of traditional ballads, learnt from both sides of her family. Possessing a beautifully articulated voice with a considerable range, she was extensively recorded with other members of her family in 1952 by Sean O'Boyle and Peter Kennedy for the BBC. While her best-known rendition is ‘As I roved out’, she was important for passing on a wide range of material to the younger generation, a great deal of which could have been forgotten at a time when folk music had apparently fallen out of fashion. At various stages during her life she lived in Rusheen, Pettigo, Co. Donegal, Mulleek, Co. Fermanagh, and Glasgow, Scotland. She married Patrick Tunney, labourer, in Glasgow on 29 December 1916, and died at home on 16 September 1975.
When the family moved to Mulleek, Co. Fermanagh, Paddy was educated locally at Derryhallow elementary school. His writing ability was first recognised in 1932 when, at the age of eleven, he won half a crown for a piece he had sent to the Irish Press. He later attended Ballyshanny technical school and found some work as a local correspondent with the Donegal Democrat, before being obliged to quit formal education at fourteen because of family circumstances. In 1935–9 he worked as forestry worker on the nearby Castlecaldwell demesne, first as a tea boy and later as a lumberjack, before finding better-paid employment as a road-roller flagman with Fermanagh county council. He joined the IRA in his teens and in 1943 was arrested at Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, for illegal possession of explosives. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude in Crumlin Road prison, Belfast; he served four and a half years. During his imprisonment, he spent a great deal of time learning Irish and history, as well as exchanging jigs and reels with fellow prisoners by tapping on the waterpipe in his cell.
Following his release from prison in 1948, he trained as a public health inspector at University College, Dublin, and on completion of a one-year course he worked in Dublin in 1949, and in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, in 1949–75, where, among other things, he helped to tackle the conditions that assisted the spread of tuberculosis in the 1940s and 1950s. While some of his songs had already been broadcast on Radio Éireann, he was offered his first contract by the BBC in Northern Ireland in 1952. There he met Sean O'Boyle, scholar and leading authority on Irish traditional song in Irish and English. This contract led him to record an album called The mountain streams, with other family members; in later years he featured in BBC radio programmes such as Nine counties of Ulster and Music on the hearth, which introduced old songs to a new audience. In 1967 he accepted a long-standing invitation from Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger to make a UK tour; it was the first of many. He worked as a public health inspector in Galway in 1975–82 and toured the US as part of the bicentenary celebrations in 1976, while regularly performing at the Tradition Club in Dublin. In 1982 he was appointed chief health inspector in the Letterkenny area and remained in this post until his retirement in 1986. He also continued to broadcast, collaborating with Ciarán Mac Mathúna on Ulster folk for Radio Éireann in the 1980s, and was a special guest of Ewan MacColl in a concert benefit for the miners' strike in Britain in 1984–5.
He published a number of books, including the autobiographical The stone fiddle: my way to traditional song (1979), Duchas and other poems (1990), Where songs do thunder: travels in traditional song (1991) and Ulster folk tales for children. He also wrote plays for radio and translated the poems of the Spanish mystic St John of the Cross into Irish. He became one of the most celebrated figures in traditional Irish music, possessing a voice that had clear links with the instrumental tradition, incorporating runs, stops and grace notes, much like pipe and fiddle music. He was renowned for his rendition of ‘big songs’ such as ‘Mountain streams’, ‘Where the moorcock crows’, ‘Murlough Mary’ and ‘Highland Mary’. He made a total of eight solo albums and Where the linnets sing with his mother and other family members, and was once described by Ewan MacColl as ‘the greatest lyrical folk-singer in the English language’, while the singer Paul Brady simply called him ‘a giant’. He counted Willie Clancy (qv), Liam Clancy, Tommy Makem (1932–2007) and Séamus Ennis (qv) among his friends, writing a song in memory of Ennis following the piper's death. Coming from the third generation of a family steeped in traditional song, he was instrumental in passing on songs which could otherwise have disappeared. He proved very influential for a number of younger traditional musicians such as Dolores Keane, John Faulkner, Dick Gaughan, Andy Irvine, and Geordie McIntyre. He lived in various locations during his life: Glasgow, Mulleek in Co. Fermanagh, Dublin, Galway, and Letterkenny in Co. Donegal. His contribution to music was recognised when he was a subject of the TG4 series Sé mo laoch, and he featured in an award-winning BBC documentary. He also had the distinction of being a champion lilter. In 1955 he married Síle, a public health nurse, daughter of Charles Bradley, bookkeeper, and Mary McMonagle; they had six children, four sons and two daughters. Following a brief illness, Paddy Tunney died 6 December 2002 in Letterkenny.